The first food consumed on the moon’s surface was communion bread and wine, and the first scripture read (silently) was John 15:5. Buzz Aldrin was a Presbyterian elder, and his pastor had consecrated elements Aldrin took on Apollo 11. Once they had landed safely, before Neil Armstrong’s “one small step,” Aldrin ate this first meal:
“I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.’”
The astronauts in their lunar lander were a tiny bit of biological life (“bios” in Greek) on the Moon’s dusty, dead surface, encased in a thin metal shell that was a triumph of a decade of intense technological effort. When Aldrin drank the wine, he spoke the words of inner spiritual life (“zoe” in Greek) and consumed the result of a much more ancient technological effort: the agricultural science of oenology or winemaking.
Jesus speaks of winemaking technology, and speaks of the Father as its practitioner, when he says “I am the true vine and the Father is the vinedresser.” (15:1) Jesus knew this technology well, because Nazareth is famous for its lush countryside and rich soil. The first-century historian Josephus said this about Nazareth specifically: “Every inch of the soil has been cultivated by the inhabitants.”
In John 5:17, Jesus says “My Father is working” on the Sabbath, and here he tells us what exactly the Father is doing as His work. His disciples would know this intuitively, but I had to look it up: a vinedresser inspects his growing grapevines, prunes the branches without fruit, and props up the branches with fruit. “Every branch he trims clean so that it might bear more fruit.” (15:2) And the branches without fruit are turned back into air, burned away. The farmers start this work when the buds appear in Spring, around the time of Passover, just when the disciples were first hearing these words.
As usual, Jesus speaks in harmony with the Hebrew Scriptures. While David and Jesus both say “The Lord is my shepherd,” Jesus and Isaiah both say “The Lord is our farmer.” Isaiah 27:2b-6 has God singing a song of “a vineyard of red wine. I the Lord do keep it. I will water it every moment, lest any hurt it. I will keep it night and day.” (27:2b-3 KJV) Isaiah clarifies that branches are not pruned in anger: “Fury is not in me,” God says, but He burns “the briars and thorns.” (27:4) God cherishes each bit of fruit, each grape, because the point of this vineyard is to bear fruit for everyone: “Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.” (27:6b)
In John 13, Jesus had cleansed the disciples, inside and out, and Judas chose to remove himself, so that his branch has been pruned. After this, in John 15:3, Jesus can say, “You are already clean because of the world I have spoken to you.” For us twenty-first century readers, our job is to stay here, “Remain in me – and I in you.” Hear how this echoes and extends the great truth of the Incarnation, as Jesus has just said, “I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” (14:20)
A plant doesn’t pick up itself and move. It remains and abides, it hangs on. It must wait for the wind, and grow in its place. The Spirit’s work here is to provide both invisible wind outside and green flowing growth inside, inner strength maturing to red fruit, so that the Trinity is complete, keeping us in the vine and the vine in us.
Agriculture isn’t the most exciting field of science. Fabrice Hadjadj says that this is precisely why God chose it as his field of work in John 15:
“Agriculture serves as an analogy for the divine Work more than craftsmanship, and unlike engineering. The model of engineering is mechanical: the model of agriculture resembles the Socratic method. The engineer imposes forms on nature understood as a stockpile of energies and materials; the farmer accompanies the deployment of a natural form of which he is not the maker. The first can increase the speed of production, he is master of the cadence; the second knows that you can’t make grass grow by pulling on it, and he is wedded to the rhythm and the circumstances of the seasons.”
When I was younger, my model of God was an engineer, tinkering with the universe, setting it up like a watch, and letting it run with an occasional “service call,” of which Christmas was an example, touching and heartwarming, but distant and, at times, even irrelevant. But now that I’m older, I’m seeing the many ways God is not like an engineer or a watchmaker. I am in that upper room with the disciples and these words are said to me. God is near, in the body and blood of Jesus and the breath of the Spirit.
God is constantly at work in every event and season, like the vinedresser preparing for harvest. God is growing fruit, and some of the times that hurt are when things are taken away that interfere with that fruit, dead things as barren as the surface of the Moon.
Terry Ehrman explains how the Spirit works with the Father’s agricultural work, coloring it green. See how the Spirit’s work aligns with the Father’s activity as vinedresser:
“St. Hildegard of Bingen develops this idea of the greening power of the Holy Spirit, calling it viriditas. A decade ago, I learned from a Ukrainian priest that in the Eastern tradition the color of the Holy Spirit is not red but green because of the Spirit’s being the Lord and Giver of Life. Through sin and vice, we become dessicated. The Holy Spirit is that life-giving water that refreshes and renews and re-vivifies. Filled with viriditas, we can see nature truly as creation—as good and beautiful and as reflecting the immanent presence of the transcendent Triune creator.”
Our activity in response is described with two more major verbs, following the five major verbs of John 14. To “remain” or “abide” is the sixth major verb, and the seventh is to “ask.” “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall happen for you.” (15:7) “… you should go and bear fruit, and your fruit will last, so that whatever you ask in my name he might give you.” (15:16)
This amazing promise is not given up front, but in the middle of this Farewell Discourse. It’s not an incentive to draw us in, but an invitation to participate in God’s slow-growing, green-hued work, further up and further in. God knows how to give good gifts to those who ask. If you ask for things that won’t last, or that lead to death, you’re not exactly remaining in the vine of life, are you?
We ask because we remain in the vine, and he remains in us, so that “I have called you friends.” In the Hebrew scriptures, only Abraham and Moses are directly called friends of God (2 Chron 20:7, Isa 41:8; Ex 33:11). Their friendship was a deep relationship of exchange. Abraham even argued with God over Sodom’s destruction (Genesis 18:22-33) and Moses spoke to the Lord face to face (Exodus 33:11).
Like them, you have been chosen (John 15:16) for this, for fruit, and for friendship, by the God who sows, tends, prunes, props up, and ultimately reaps good fruit for all the world. This high calling comes about through the sometimes slow, sometimes sharp, always trustworthy, work of the divine vinedresser, bringing the fruit of the Spirit from the dirt of daily life.
QUOTES: Fabrice Hadjadj p. 140 The Resurrection: Experience Life in the Risen Christ
Terry Ehrman, “Do We Love Creation Like God Does?” Church Life Journal, June 17, 2022.
IMAGE: Roman Mosaic of vineyard workers, from the Museum of Cherchell (Algeria)
